Two studies, currently underway at the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, are soliciting public input as part of their process, and they need to hear from you. You can join in in person/watch live (see 1 below) and you can submit comments online this month (see 2 below). 1) Come in person, or watch live You can give input in person, or watch the public session of a joint meeting of both studies at UCSF, San Francisco. From the NASEM Board on Higher Education and Workforce: Thursday, September 14, 2017 1:30 pm – 5:15 pm PDT University of California, San Francisco Genentech Hall Auditorium* 600 16th Street San Francisco, CA *Please note that meeting space is limited. A webcast will also be available. This public session of the fourth meeting for the Next Generation Researchers Initiative will feature distinguished scientists, physicians, industry leaders, and scholars who will discuss the barriers and opportunities facing the next generation of independent researchers in the biomedical and behavioral sciences. Particular emphasis will be on hearing postdoctoral perspectives and envisioning the future of research. This meeting will feature and be moderated by: Chair Alan Leshner, PhD, Chief Executive Officer Emeritus, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Chair Ron Daniels, President, the Johns Hopkins University Register Here for the In-Person Meeting Register Here for the Webcast Draft Agenda: 1:30 p.m. – 1:35 p.m. Opening Remarks by Host Keith Yamamoto 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Panel I: Bold Visions for the Future of Science Panelists will share their vision on how changes to today’s system of graduate education and early research...

Should we change science? What are the barriers to making change? Whose responsibility is it to change science and how do we engage all scientists and other stakeholders? Join us and the Union of Concerned Scientists for a Twitter chat on “Changing science”, as part of a broader discussion of changes you would like to see in science and what ideas & resources our organizations can provide for changes towards open science, outreach, advocacy, and public engagement. Follow #FORchangingscience on Tuesday, July 25, 2017 from 1-2 pm ET to participate in the discussion with @FORsymp and @SciNetUCS, and our guest participants: The EMCR Forum (@EMCRForum); The Center for Open Science (@OSFramework); The STEM Advocacy Group (@STEMadvocacy); Arturo Casadevall, (professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, @ACasadevall1); Andrew Hoffman (Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan, @HoffmanAndy); Emily Cloyd (AAAS Public Engagement, @EngageClimate) and Esther Ngumbi (postdoc at Auburn Ngumbi, @EstherNgumbi). This event is co-hosted by the UCS Science Network: http://www.ucsusa.org/sciencenetwork...

This is a guest post by Future of Research policy activist, Adriana Bankston. Being part of Future of Research, I often wonder whether the issues we are facing in the scientific system in the U.S. also exist elsewhere in the world. Although I grew up in Eastern Europe, most of my research experiences have been in laboratories across the U.S. This has definitely given me a great variety of experiences and perspectives. But, as I’ve recently witnessed in the March for Science events, science is indeed global and most likely we all face the same issues and can learn from each other. Very recently, I had the great chance of remotely attending the 2nd Homo scientificus europaeus Meeting, entitled “A pan-European Scientists’ Community: Promoting an Open Science in an Open World“, which took place in Barcelona, Spain, and was introduced here. The main goal of this meeting was to foster the creation of a large pan-European community of citizen-scientists supporting the new social contract between science and society. The meeting was divided into 3 areas: 1) initiatives from grassroots organizations and organizers of various European “March for Science” marches; 2) a discussion of citizen science projects/engaging the public with science and 3) open science and broader issues in the scientific enterprise. The Future of Research Executive Director Gary McDowell gave a brief talk and participated in the debate in the final session. Common themes emerged throughout this meeting, which are great reminders of how science is done or should be done in the future, not just in Europe, but everywhere in the world. To some extent,...

This is a guest post by Future of Research policy activist, Adriana Bankston. The AAAS meeting is a useful platform in which to discuss many important issues plaguing science today. Fundamental to the integrity of the scientific enterprise is being able to perform rigorous experiments at the bench, and successfully reproducing research findings. To this end, the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) has implemented Rigor and Reproducibility guidelines, which represent fundamental changes to the grant application and review process. These guidelines went into effect on January 25, 2016. A session at the 2017 AAAS meeting entitled “Rigor and Reproducibility One Year Later: How Has the Biomedical Community Responded?” explored the feedback received from both the NIH and the research community following these guidelines, and discussed how to best implement them to achieve both increased rates of reproducibility and dramatic returns on research funding investments. The session was moderated by Leonard Freedman from Global Biological Standards Institute (GBSI), a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the credibility, reproducibility, and translatability of biomedical research through best practices and standards. One of their initiatives, Reproducibility2020, aims to significantly improve the quality of preclinical biological research by the year 2020. The session featured Michael Lauer from the National Institutes of Health and William Kaelin from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as speakers, and Judith Kimble from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, also a member of the steering committee for Rescuing Biomedical Research, as the discussant. Michael Lauer on p-hacking and cognitive biases Michael Lauer began his talk by discussing the John Ioannidis paper from 2005 entitled “Why Most Published Research...

FoR’s mission is to improve the scientific research enterprise. We promote grassroots advocacy amongst junior researchers to discuss the problems they perceive with science, and possible solutions to fix them. We then work on making these solutions a reality, working with and advocating to institutions, scientific societies, federal agencies and senior scientists to effect change – and to speak as a voice of junior researchers. We also seek to empower junior researchers by collecting data about academia and scientific training, and make the data available to help them make rational decisions when figuring out how best to use their passion for science to benefit society. This mission applies to problems like postdoc salaries and the recent Fair Labor Standards Act fiasco. It also applies to problems like the President’s Executive Order banning nationals of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia from entering the U.S. for at least the next 90 days, and how we as a scientific community respond to them. A huge number of junior researchers in the U.S. are not U.S. citizens. Two-thirds of postdoctoral researchers are estimated to be foreign nationals, and the majority of those are estimated to be on temporary visas such as J-1 or H-1B visas. Considering just one of the seven affected countries, there were more than 10,000 Iranian students alone in the U.S. in 2013-14, and 1,364 Iranian scholars at U.S. institutions. This Executive Order prevents these scientists from re-entering the country if they leave, or entering if they are currently outside. It prevents scientists from traveling to and from conferences. But these actions not...

The “Advocating for Science” symposium and workshop is taking place at MIT September 16-17, 2016, to enable junior scientists to advocate for science. The purpose of the meeting is to give an opportunity to those with a passion for advocating for science to develop their advocacy skills, meet like-minded junior scientists and develop focused efforts together to effect positive change. To try to extend this meeting beyond the Boston area, we recently put out an application call for travel scholarships for attendees from further afield. Following interviews with our Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute Travel Award Recipient, Alex Erwin, and Advocating for Science Travel recipients Holly Hamilton, Katherine Simeon, Adriana Bankston, Tess Eidem, and Sridhar Vedachalam, here is our final interview with Elisa van der Plas: Tell us a little about your career path so far and what you are currently working on. I am currently a graduate student in Brain and Cognitive Science at the University of Amsterdam, with several ongoing research projects with labs at the University of Oxford and at Donders Institute of Brain, Behaviour and Cognition in Nijmegen. My research uses computational modelling and imaging techniques to investigate the neuronal fundaments of social decision-making, like moral decision-making and empathy-based attention reorientation. My obsession with developing research ideas on interdisciplinary boundaries originally started in Costa Rica, where I minored in biology at the capital’s university. The intensive program combined field trips in conservation areas (see picture) and governmental debates to experience the country’s radical environmental policy from both an administrative and academic perspective. This enabled my consideration of sustainability as being more than just the intrinsic value of nature, and helped...